Oil Tanker Attack Tracker

As of October 22, 2026: the most recent reported strike on commercial shipping is Oct 21 — 0 days ago. The June 28 stand-down collapsed the night of July 7: three commercial tankers were struck in and near the strait, the US struck Iranian air-defense and anti-ship targets, and on July 8 President Trump declared the truce over. Escalation compounded through the weekend: the US ran its heaviest strikes in weeks on Iranian air defenses and IRGC fast-boat assets in and near the strait, Iran targeted Gulf states and reported explosions at Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas, and on July 12 Tehran formally declared the strait closed to shipping. The week that followed made the declaration load-bearing: transits fell to a two-month low of 7 vessels (Kpler, Jul 17) against a ~94/day norm, Brent repriced from about $76 to $88.10 (+15.9% on the week), US strikes killed about 50 on July 18 as Tehran declared the Islamabad memorandum suspended, and on July 19 — the ninth consecutive night of strikes — the IRGC re-declared the strait fully closed, claiming two tankers destroyed. CENTCOM disputes both claims and no tracker has confirmed a zero-transit day: dark-AIS ships and Oman ship-to-ship transfers keep a reduced flow alive. The week of July 20 compressed the whole war into five days: attacks inside the strait disabled a Kuwaiti tanker, the Houthis opened a second front on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, Brent closed above $100 for the first time since May ($100.69, July 23) as Hormuz crossings hit ONE tanker — then the direct US-Iran exchange paused three straight nights amid Oman-mediated talks and Brent gave the entire spike back, breaking below $90 on July 27 and sliding through $88 to settle at $85.98 on July 28 — a $14.71 round trip in five sessions, with an intraday low of $83.26. The diplomacy widened on July 28: Oman formally proposed a Malacca-style joint-management regime for the strait, with voluntary transit fees and no unilateral Iranian control, and Tehran rejected it the same day. Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state television the equal-division plan did not meet Iran's security concerns, countered with a temporary arrangement giving Iran full control of one shipping lane and partial control of the other, and said Iran had blocked an Omani plan to bring a third country in to clear mines from the southern route. Those are Iranian government claims and are attributed as such; no independent party has confirmed the mine-clearing account. The pause never covered the Red Sea — the July 25 Houthi strike on the Jizan refinery halted Saudi west-coast crude loading, and Aramco has confirmed the shutdown into mid-August — and on the night of July 28 it broke outright: Iran fired ballistic missiles at a US base in Jordan (intercepted, per Jordan's military), and on July 29 the US answered with its heaviest strikes of the war — dozens of IRGC targets including command centers, missile and drone facilities and maritime capabilities, per CENTCOM, with explosions reported at Bandar Abbas and Kish Island at the strait's edge. Brent settled $90.74, up 7.9%, recovering in one session most of what five sessions of diplomacy had unwound. On July 30 the IRGC vowed to punish the aggressor, claimed full control of the strait, and declared it would remain closed — CENTCOM rejected the control claim, saying it has assisted roughly a thousand ships through since early May — while the tape told the opposite story: Kpler counted 12 crossings on July 28 and 14 on July 29, the highest since mid-July, straight through the sharpest escalation of the war. Iran answered the heavy wave on July 31 with missile strikes on US-linked air bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, and an unclaimed drone hit a US-owned facility and a Greek tanker at Damietta, Egypt — the war's first strike on Egyptian soil. Then the weekend turned on a claim and a denial: on August 2 President Trump said he had cancelled a planned strike he called the biggest since World War II at the urging of Saudi, Qatari and Emirati leaders, with talks to begin August 3 — and Iran publicly denied any talks were resuming at all. Through it, UKMTO held its threat level at CRITICAL, reported August 1 attacks on an LNG carrier and a crude tanker northeast of the strait, and cited severe GNSS jamming across the waterway; OPEC+ approved another 188,000 bpd for September and pointedly flagged "safeguarding international maritime routes." The transit record itself went dark at the decisive moment: after the 14-crossing high of July 29, Kpler described July 30 only as a sharp fall, and no priority tracker has published a numeric Hormuz count since. A near halt is not a verified one; the verdict still resolves on transit counts, not statements.

The log

Every entry is a dated wire report linked to its original outlet. Reports, not adjudications: follow-up coverage appears under its publication date. The log starts April 1, 2026 — for the opening weeks of the crisis, see the weekly briefings.

Tanker attacks: common questions

Source: Crude Signal wire archive, de-duplicated; official floor per open-source tracking (open-source floor through 2026-05-14). Updated October 22, 2026. This log refreshes automatically as new reports land on the wire.